“Hush, little girl,” interposed Voles, with mock severity. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You are hurting your dear aunt’s feelings. She is your aunt. I ought to know, considering that you are my daughter!”
“Your daughter!”
Now, indeed, she felt ready to dare dragons. This coarse, brutal giant of a man her father! Her gorge rose at the suggestion. Almost fiercely she resolved to hold her own against these persecutors who scrupled not to use any lying device that would suit their purpose.
“Yes,” he cried truculently. “Don’t I come up to your expectations?”
“If you are my father,” she said, with a strange self-possession that came to her aid in this trying moment, “where is my mother?”
“Sorry to say she died long since.”
“Did you murder her as you tried to murder Mr. Tower?”
The chance shot went home, though it hit her callous hearer in a way she could not then appreciate. He swore violently.
“You’re my daughter, I tell you,” he vociferated, “and the first thing you have to learn is obedience. Your head has been turned, young lady, by your pretty Rex and his nice ways. I’ll have to teach you not to address me in that fashion. Take her to her room, Rachel.”
Driven to frenzy by a dreadful and wholly unexpected predicament, Winifred cast off the hand her “aunt” laid on her shoulder.